Amanda's Books and More: out of the mouths of babes

Showing posts with label out of the mouths of babes. Show all posts

Saturday, September 29, 2012

Make My Saturday Sweet - Blog Hop #8

Amanda Says the Funniest Things

Daddy drops the kids off at school in the mornings. Amanda is always last, because she’s not big enough to jump out of the car and go inside on her own like her brother and sisters. After dropping off the eldest siblings at the high school, he asked her, “Are you going to go to this school one day?”

She asked, “How old is Jeremiah and Jessica?”

Daddy replied, “Jessica is 13 (she’s 14, but he forgot) and Jeremiah is 15.”

She thought for a moment and, taking her daddy by surprise, she said, “Actually… 15 is not a lot.” Then, to demonstrate what she meant, she proceeded to count out loud, “1, 2, 3…” to 15.

Thursday, I brought Amanda home with a little friend from school. I normally ask her to wash her hands, but a couple of times now she’s done it without me even asking. Before I gave the usual reminder, she told her friend, “We have to wash hands, ‘cause Adam and Eve ate the wrong apple.”

I wondered where she had gotten that from, until Hubby filled me in on a conversation that he had had earlier with her. She had asked him why we must wash hands all the time. Daddy told her that it was because Adam and Eve had eaten the wrong fruit.

When I brought her home from school on Friday, she asked, “Who sprinkled on our car?” Sometimes I give the shortest answers, because I can’t be bothered, so I replied, “God did.” And then, not wanting her to think that God was misbehaving, I added, “With the rain.”

Amanda adores her big brother. The other day she said, “When you grow up, can I be your daughter, so I’m not all alone.”

You can easily see why she’s the star of this blog.

Now, on to the blog hop...

It's time for another Make My Saturday Sweet (M.M.S.S.) blog hop! Join Tina (your host) and Tricia (your co-host) for this fun and easy hop. All family friendly blogs are welcome!

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Friday, July 20, 2012

Learning Good Behavior from a 4-Year-Old

When writing posts about parenting, I usually try to put my best foot forward. Sometimes I allow my readers glimpses of my weaknesses, but mostly the topics give me the opportunity to share from years of experience. This is one of those posts where I let my readers know that I’m far from perfect, because today’s two lessons on good behavior I have learned from a 4-year-old. My daughter, Amanda, is that 4-year-old.

The first lesson I learned is on sharing. I have a sweet tooth. In the first years of married life, if I bought a soft-serve ice-cream and my husband wanted to share it, I’d tell him to buy his own one. If I had a candy bar, oh baby, I wanted that thing all for myself! For some reason, my husband loves sharing my sweet indulgences. It works with him the other way too. If he has something that looks really good, he will never not share it with me. Over time, I loosened up in the area of sharing.

So, what has Amanda taught me on that subject? She has taught me about the joy of sharing. She would rather share her few Smarties (M&Ms) than keep them for herself. You should see the smile on her face when she goes around to every member of our family with candy in her hand. I have tried to stop her from sharing in the past. That’s because we don’t allow her a whole kid’s size box (with M&Ms it would be a small packet) at once. We limit the amount that she’s allowed to eat just like we did with our other kids.

I would reason with her whenever I suggested that she shouldn’t share. My reasoning was that there are six members in our family, and if she shared her few treats with everyone, she’d have hardly any left for herself. Once, I even put my foot down, but you should have seen how sad that made her. I felt really bad. She wasn’t uncomprehending what I was trying to say, she was just finding more joy in sharing than having those extra sweets for herself. Now, I’ve learned that there is a greater joy in sharing than in self-indulging.

The second lesson I learned from her is on having a gracious attitude. Yesterday, she demonstrated it so well for hubby and me. Every Thursday she’s allowed to take her little Disney Princesses bicycle to school with her. It’s part of her teacher’s preschool program for the kids, and she loves taking her bike, but sometimes we forget.

Amanda said to her daddy this time, “Daddy, it’s okay if you forget. Teacher also has bikes that we can use.” Her words were like a healing balm to my soul. If someone forgets to do something that I’ve asked them to do, then I throw a small fit. I need to be more gracious toward the people in my life.

Related post: Learning Doesn’t Only Happen in School

Tuesday, July 3, 2012

Baking and Counting

Amanda loves helping me in the kitchen, especially when I’m baking, because there are things that she can safely do. The other day we made pancakes together. (I know, technically it’s not baking, since we use a frying pan.) Her job was to add in the ingredients once I’d measured them and then to help me mix it all together.

The recipe that I used is from the Better Homes and Gardens New Cook Book. My mom brought the cook book with her from the States some years back and I’ve used it more than any of my other cook books. I usually like making the buttermilk pancakes, but when I don’t have buttermilk in the fridge then I just make the regular milk pancakes.

Since I have a big family, I tripled the recipe. Tripling the recipe meant that we got to add more of everything, which meant more fun for Amanda. I had her count the quantities as we added them to the bowl. When we got to the sugar, I used a teaspoon instead of a tablespoon, which meant that she would have to count that much higher.

I can tell that Amanda is getting more confident with her numbers and simple math. The other day she asked for two slices of avocado on toast. (We mash them up and add a bit of freshly squeezed lemon juice with salt and pepper to taste, but leave the pepper off for Amanda.) I didn’t think she’d finish two, so I tried to make one slice look like more by cutting it into four squares. I was unable to trick her. She said, “Mom, that’s not two slices. You cut one slice into four!”

Thursday, June 28, 2012

Mixing Up Words: The Funny Side of Life

I’m a morning person and I like to stay up late at night, but I have to take a nap every day. This morning I woke just after 5 am and stayed in bed for another 40 minutes just because it was too early even for me. When I did get up, it was so dark that the stars were still shining brightly. Since my husband isn’t a morning person and he also likes to stay up late, but doesn’t take a nap like me, I try not to wake him.

Amanda and Samantha

The other day, both Amanda and Samantha were already up after I had showered and wanted to get dressed, so I took my things to their room. A little bit later, Amanda came walking through to the office and thrust my pajama bottoms at me and said, “I found this on my bed!” She then told me to follow her to her room.

When we got there she said, “Look! Your dry hair is on my bed too and it’s making it so messy!” She meant my hairdryer and she isn’t normally so concerned about her bed. Later that day she mixed up another word. She called corn-on-the-cob "cob corn." This morning she gave me a new one, horse seals as in sea horses, too funny!

It’s hilarious when little kids get their words mixed up. By the time the evening of last night rolled around, I found the opposite to also be true. Both Amanda and Samantha were watching a cartoon. I asked them if it was the show where the kids turn into dinosaurs. Amanda felt that it was important that I know the proper name of the program and so she told me in her best teacher’s voice with great emphasis, “It’s Dino Squad.”

Well, I just burst out laughing. She could say Dino Squad perfectly, but not hairdryer. It just goes to show that some things are more important than other things in a 4-year-old’s life.

Thursday, June 14, 2012

Knots in My Hair!

Amanda is playing that the dolphins are diving

in the water at South Africa's West Coast.

The kids say the funniest things and I don’t always write it down. Sometimes, I say to myself that I’ll write it down later, but then I forget. I usually just let life happen, but I’ve found that writing it down allows me the time to enjoy the moment again and again.

The other day, I came across a little note of mine that had been buried under other papers near the computer. It was a funny moment that I had had with Amanda some months back and I had completely forgotten about it. Thank goodness that I had written it down on paper and not lost it! I’ve included a short introduction to help set the scene.

Every morning, I brush Amanda’s hair and tie it up out of her face. She has lots of curls that are sometimes hard to brush. Often, she complains that I’m hurting her. I try hard not to and I apologize when it pulls. If I don’t apologize, she gets upset with me.

On this particular morning she said the funniest thing. “You’re putting knots in my hair!”

“No, I’m not. I’m brushing the knots out,” I replied.

“You are putting knots in my hair. I feel it!”

I hope you enjoyed that as much as I did. I thought to include a bit about how I edited these two photos. I edited both using PicMonkey, but I first straightened the one where Amanda is sitting with Picasa 3. I’ve included some links on these topics.

Related posts:

Girls and Hair
Kids with Animals – 8: How to Straighten a Photo in Picasa 3
Being Herself – 4: An Introduction to PicMonkey, a Free On-Line Photo Editing Program
Kids with Animals – 3: How to Edit a Photo Using PicMonkey

Monday, June 4, 2012

An Unconventional Question

I asked Amanda an unconventional question and I got an unconventional answer.

I’ll begin with the conventional question. As soon as Amanda got back from her Nanna’s, we all basically asked her the same thing, “Did you have a nice time with Nanna?” Of course, the answer was yes. She was very excited to tell us all about it.

Here are a few of the things she told me:

Her Nanna bought her small yoghurts with Barbie pictures on them. She got to pick out a squeeze bottle of honey at the store. She got to have treats all the time. Her Nanna let her to do anything she liked (I’m sure within reason). For dinner, they ate Gnocchi, which she struggled to pronounce. (It’s funny how a detail like that is important to a four-year-old, but I like it when she shares the details. I’m pretty sure she mentioned it because it was new for her.)

The part her Nanna told me was that they spent as much time at the beach as possible.

Not long after Amanda arrived home from her visit, I decided to ask her a less standard question. Instead of “Did you have a nice time with Nanna?” I asked her, “Did Nanna have a nice time with you?”

With barely a pause, Amanda replied, “No.” Then she looked straight at me and, with the voice of a teacher wanting to explain something to her pupil, said, “It’s hard work babysitting.”

For me, that was a remarkable answer, especially since she came up with it all by herself. I do know her Nanna had a nice time with her, she adores her grandkids, but I’m also sure it was hard work. This is the wisdom of a four-year-old.

I took this photo of Amanda in her Hello Kitty swimsuit running on the beach by her grandparents’ house at Britannia Bay, South Africa, December 2011.

Here are more posts on the funny and/or profound things that Amanda has said:

Monday, April 9, 2012

Having fun with Pinterest - Part 2

I shared in my previous post how Amanda and I have been having fun with the paint projects I’ve learned about on Pinterest. I’ve also picked up a few new recipes and even tried one. There seems to be something about almost anything on this site.

There can also be a down side to all of it. For example, I’ve been enjoying looking at the many wonderful kids’ rooms concepts over the past few weeks. Amanda shares a room with her sister, Samantha, and posters are the main decoration on their walls. I began to think that their walls don’t look good enough anymore. It’s normal to want to keep up with modern trends, but it’s not always possible.

It began to weigh a little bit on my heart, but I didn’t voice my concern. So, I was quite surprised when, out of the blue, Amanda brought up the subject herself. As I was putting her to bed, she began counting out loud the number of Hello Kitty and Barbie posters on her wall. Then she asked me why she had more Hello Kitty posters than Barbie posters. For some reason she omitted her My Little Pony posters from the discussion. I gave her some short answer. Yes, I was being impatient, maybe because it had become a sensitive subject for me.

Then she said something that blew me away. She ended with, “My room is perfect!” I realize, once again, that God loves me, because that just says it all.

You might like to read “Out of the Mouths of Babes” if you haven’t already.

Saturday, March 31, 2012

Never Underestimate Your Kids

Amanda and her big brother, Jeremiah, have a special bond. When we first shared our news with the kids that I was pregnant with our fourth child, Jeremiah was so thrilled that he ran to tell his friends who lived nearby. To be honest, I wasn’t sure how the kids would react to the news and so I was a little surprised that he was so excited.

Yesterday, Amanda told me about a conversation that her brother had with her. She told me that he had said how adorable and precious she was. She then told him how special he was to her. As she was telling me this, I could see that it touched her deeply. Amanda finished off by saying, “It was so sad.”

I asked her, “Don’t you mean ‘so sweet?’”

“No, Mom. It was sad. You can be happy and sad at the same time.”

Her choice of words was unusual, but I realized that she was speaking about something touching her so deeply that it almost hurt. I had explained to her before in movies why some people cry when they’re very happy. Later I told Jeremiah the odd thing she had said and he replied, “She’s a philosopher.”

Never underestimate your kids’ abilities to understand and reason no matter how young they are. I think adults in general are too quick to brush kids aside thinking they are too young to say anything of value and therefore don’t need to be heard. I have known my kids to say profound things at just the right moments.

I recommend you read (if you haven’t already), “Out of the Mouths of Babes.”

I took the above photo of Jeremiah with his baby sister, Amanda, in 2008.

Saturday, March 17, 2012

Out of the Mouths of Babes

Giving thanks for fish and chips

I mentioned previously that Amanda had been sick. When your child is sick, it’s often difficult to know what’s wrong and if you need to take him/her to the doctor. If you do take your child to the doctor, the doctor will decide what the problem is, but there is room for error even with all the learning and years of experience that your doctor will have had. At the end of the day, you know your child and you must go with your gut feeling to insure his/her good health.

Two days ago, I was still worrying about Amanda. It wasn’t clear to me if she was on the road to complete recovery. Deep down I knew that she was, but there was a specific moment that I doubted myself. It was at that precise moment, as the worry thoughts passed through my mind, that Amanda voiced what I had not said. “Mom, don’t worry, I’m fine.”

How did my child know what I was thinking? How did she know what to say at the right time? It was so specifically appropriate that I decided to heed her advice. Out of the mouths of babes, God speaks (Luke 10:21).

Thursday, March 15, 2012

Why We Don't Have a Cat

I took my dog for a walk this evening. It wasn’t late, but it was already dark outside. I was walking in my neighborhood where the street lights are scattered along the way, leaving patches of darkness between them. At one of these dark sections, we nearly walked into a dead cat. It gave me such a fright.

Nothing seemed wrong with it, except that it was stiff. Since the dead cat was lying next to the road, I figured that it must have been hit by a car. This reminded me of another incident that happened last year. The details were no longer clear in my mind, so I went to my Facebook to find the proper wording. This is what I had written:

Yesterday morning we were driving to school and I saw a beautiful dead cat on the road. I took the opportunity to tell Samantha that this was another reason why we didn't want to get a cat (she's been begging us for a kitten) and then Amanda replied, "But we don't want to get the dying kind. We want another kind."

Saturday, March 3, 2012

A Birthday Card in the Mailbox

Amanda said the funniest thing...

A few days ago it was Amanda’s birthday. Ever since she got two cards in our mailbox, she has wanted to go out and check if there are more.

It just so happened that she received four birthday cards for her fourth birthday.

Yesterday, we went out to the mailbox together and came back inside with a birthday card for me. (Our birthdays are a few days apart.) Once inside the house, she said, “Mom, when you turn four you can also have four cards like me!”

Wednesday, February 15, 2012

Introducing Your Child to the World of Books

One evening, when I was putting Amanda to bed, I gave her the library book that she had picked out. She reminded me not to turn the light off and I answered, "Of course I won't turn it off, you're going to look at a book."

This was in the days before she could pronounce the letter "L.” She replied, "I'm going to READ, not going to YOOK. READING is not YOOKING!"

We were on holiday when I took this photo of my three girls reading.

Just the other day, my eldest daughter was reminiscing over the times when I read to the three older kids at our old house. She remembered how we all gathered on the double bed for story-time. (I remember my son often preferred the floor, because space was an issue.) We actually went through the entire Narnia series by C.S. Lewis. I read them in chronological order beginning with The Magician’s Nephew.

Today, I’m fortunate to have three strong readers out of my three older kids. Even though Amanda isn’t old enough to read yet, that doesn’t stop her. Every day she looks at books.

Monday, February 13, 2012

More than a Prince

Amanda said the funniest thing to me the other day. "Mom, you're supposed to marry a prince not a daddy!"

I shared this on Facebook and two replies in particular carried a lot of wisdom.

“Your daddy is a prince,” said a friend.

“Great Daddies are much better,” said another friend.

Amanda’s daddy might not be the princely package, but he’s so much more. He has his rough edges at times, he can shout and be grumpy, but he also often goes the extra mile for me and for our kids. More recently, Amanda has been saying that her daddy is her favorite.

This story continues in "Happily Ever After."